Dateline December 2010

Heinz Herschmann is now in his 87th year, and showing no sign of slowing down. In addition to his ‘day job’ running Apollo Sound, Heinz is also a very keen chess player with an international reputation. Visit any of the main chess sites on the internet, and you will discover how high he now is on the World and British Chess Grading Lists! We congratulate him on his many achievements playing this testing game. Heinz is hoping to meet up again with his many friends at our forthcoming London meeting.

And further congratulations are due to our member Philip Lane, the busy composer, arranger and record producer who has been involved with so many excellent recordings of Light Music. In a ceremony in Gloucester Cathedral on 19th November, Philip was made an Honorary DMus (Doctor of Music) by the University of Gloucester ‘for services to music and Cheltenham’.

Sarah Mohr-Pietsch announced towards the end of September that there would be a Light Music slot on her BBC Radio 3 Breakfast Show every Thursday. The first piece she chose was Arthur Benjamin's Jamaican Rumba.

During the summer David Ades has been working for the Imperial War Museum on providing a musical soundtrack for silent war films. The first production to be completed covers the Battle of Ypres during the First World War. Alongside some wartime footage there are scenes from a documentary made in 1922. Authentic acoustic recordings from that period would have been hard to locate, and could quickly become tedious for a production approaching two hours long. To make the music soundtrack more acceptable for today’s ears it was decided that material appropriate for general war scenes should be used. Some people object to background music, and they obviously have the option of watching the film (being released on DVD) with the volume turned off. Others can hear the music, plus sound effects, and among the composers chosen by David are Trevor Duncan, Charles Williams, Dolf van der Linden, Peter Yorke, Robert Farnon, John Ansell, Roger Roger, Clive Richardson, Hubert Clifford, Len Stevens, Bruce Campbell, Cecil Milner, Ronald Hanmer, Ronald Binge and Allan Gray.

We do not usually report the passing of members in our magazine, but we make an exception this time with one of our American friends, Richard Jessen. Readers will be familiar with his articles for JIM in recent years, and particularly his admiration for the singer Vikki Carr. Sadly Richard lost a battle with cancer and died in October at the tragically young age of 56.

John Wilson has a busy conducting schedule ahead of him. He is going on tour in the UK with his MGM Celebration, which was such a hit at the 2009 Proms. You can join the audience at the following venues (telephone booking numbers are shown): 26 November, Manchester (0161 907 9000); 27 November, Gateshead (0191 443 4661); 28 November, Glasgow (0141 353 8000); 29 November, Birmingham (0121 780 3333); 1 December, Cardiff (02920 878500); 3 December, Bournemouth (0844 576 3000); and 5 December, Nottingham (0115 989 5555). If you live in or near Liverpool, there are two events with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic you may not want to miss: on 31 December John conducts a New Year’s Eve Concert Celebrating Frank Sinatra; and on 15 January he conducts "Puttin’ On The Ritz" – A Celebration of Fred Astaire and his Leading Ladies.

Geoff Leonard was born in Bristol. He spent much of his working career in banking but became an independent record producer in the early nineties, specialising in the works of John Barry and British TV theme compilations.

He also wrote liner notes for many soundtrack albums, including those by John Barry, Roy Budd, Ron Grainer, Maurice Jarre and Johnny Harris. He co-wrote two biographies of John Barry in 1998 and 2008, and is currently working on a biography of singer, actor, producer Adam Faith.

He joined the Internet Movie Data-base (www.imdb.com) as a data-manager in 2001 and looked after biographies, composers and the music-department, amongst other tasks. He retired after nine years loyal service in order to continue writing.